899 Euro. Oculus wins the price point!
I remember the back and forth comparisons and debates over price, feature set, compatibility, the companies behind them, form factor and all sorts of details. Regardless, they were some of the first "good enough" smartphones the average consumer could purchase even if their bulk and higher price kept them mostly in the realm of professionals, enthusiasts, and early adopters.
Then 5 or 6 years later we had an industry that was already becoming dominated by Apple and Google rather than Palm and Microsoft. Devices were much faster, more capable, and more accessible. Now you can buy one for $150 and get something that's actually somewhat decent.
Oculus Rift is inherently designed for a sit-down experience with optional controllers, Vive allows room-scale experiences with controllers included. That's a pretty fundamental difference in the way your users will experience your media. Also, room-scale will essentially require a dedicated VR room free of obstacles. As such I'm guessing many Vive users will be having a sit-down experience too.
I expect that a lot of the first-gen stuff will be cockpit simulators like EVE: Valkyrie, because it's the lowest common denominator. It's in HTC's best interest to push room-scale content because that is an effective lock-in for them at this point, but that means targeting a small minority of VR users, and I think that's going to be a difficult experience to adapt for the majority userbase of sit-down users.
This is the part which pointed me more toward Oculus. I simply do not have the space for a dedicated VR room, so all the work done into "room scale experience" is moot for me and Oculus focus on a seated experience seems to be a better fit for me here.
Also, the Vive has a front facing camera and 'whole room' VR. If anything, its something of a bargain at this price for those who want this featureset. The rumor mill up until recently was pegging this system at $1200 - $1500 which many analysts thought was practical.
Occulus wins on pure price point. Certainly you get more with the Vive, so it's not accurate to compare the two, and perhaps the Vive delivers a better experience with it's addons, but that is still TBD if the Vive packins provide a VR experience that people care about.
The nearest example I can think of is the XB1 vs PS4. PS4 won on price point, despite the XB1 shipping with the Kinect for $100 more.
I just resetup my consoles, and didn't bother setting up the Kinect.
A better analogy is imagine if the Wii shipped with gamecube controllers. It would have failed in the market.
VR experiences [you desire], require proper VR friendly controls [also VR friendly physical space, and VR friendly PCs]. Occulus has had several successful demos without the use of VR friendly controls, with some using just a mobile phone as the backing CPU/GPU. It's still yet to be determined if initially the streamline experience that comes with the base Occulus/GearVR setup is what the market wants, compared to the more fully immersive experience that comes with the Vive (at the additional cost).
With a newborn at home, I don't have the luxury using VR, but I am excited to see how this all shakes out. While my personal preference is for something I can use while at my desk (270 virtual desktop?), I also see how compelling a fully immersive VR experience can be.
A true price comparison will only be possible once Oculus Touch is available (the Rift's motion controllers).
This includes two controllers as well though, so not entirely apples-to-apples.